Simple Authoring of Statistical Analyses by and for Blind People

A. Jonathan R. Godfrey

Institute of Fundamental Sciences, Massey University,
Palmerston North, New Zealand. a.j.godfrey@massey.ac.nz

and

James M. P. Curtis

School of Engineering and Advanced Technology, Massey University,
Palmerston North, New Zealand.
james@curtis.net.nz

masseyUniversityLogo

Presented by Jonathan Godfrey on 4February 2016

Blind users want the same from base R as does any other user.

More importantly though, we also want the same benefits that front-ends and integrated development environments offer our classmates and colleagues.

Problems for blind authors

Markdown is a simple markup language. The primary output document type is HTML, but use of pandoc (See the pandoc home page at http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/) means that one source markdown file can be processed into many different output document formats including HTML, Microsoft Word, pdf (via LaTeX), Open Office, rich text format, and a variety of slide show presentation formats.

Mathematical content is entered using a simplified set of LaTeX expressions.

R markdown

Enter WriteR

We now demonstrate use of R by introducing a new Windows application written in Python.

timeline

2007 Started using R almost exclusively for personal work. 
2008 R included in teaching and all research work.  
2009 Promoted R as viable alternative for blind students at WEIMS09 conference in Fukuoka.  
2010 Started using Sweave.  
2011 Promoted R to blind students at the Summer University held in the Czech Republic.  
2012 Announced potential for the BrailleR package at DEIMS12 conference in Tokyo.  
2013 R Journal article gets printed (includes announcement of BrailleR package).  
     Promoted R to blind students at the Summer University held in Germany. 
2014 Addendum to R Journal article.  
     attend UseR in Los Angeles. 
     Promoted R to blind students at the Summer University held in France. 
2015 Attended UseR in Denmark and held workshops in Europe.

Summer University

Testing and evaluation

  1. I used the WriteR editor throughout the first semester of 2015 for my own teaching as a testing ground for its developments.

  2. I've written all the slides for this talk using WriteR.

Some assurances

We have ensured that the WriteR interface:

The BrailleR package

Now it's time to get more blind R users working with WriteR.

-By going to GitHub there is a chance that others will contribute to the development of WriteR.

BlindRUG

Australia Belgium Brazil Canada Chile Czech Germany Greece India

Italy Japan TheNetherlands NewZealand Romania SouthAfrica SouthKoreaa UK US

Participants include lecturers (4), students (~10), disability support staff (3), and other blind people using R (~10).

The National Federation of the Blind in the USA is graciously hosting our email list.

It is not practical to meet up as a group in a physical sense, and thus far we have not worked out how to gather in a virtual setting.

BlindRUG has been (mostly) an announcement list until very recently.

Show and tell…

Let's do a few things:

ExampleFolder

Contact details

A. Jonathan R. Godfrey
Institute of Fundamental Sciences, Massey University,
Palmerston North, New Zealand
email: a.j.godfrey@massey.ac.nz

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